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JOURNALS // Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika // Archive

TMF, 1999 Volume 120, Number 3, Pages 451–472 (Mi tmf790)

This article is cited in 24 papers

False vacuum decay in the de Sitter space–time

V. A. Rubakov, S. M. Sibiryakov

Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract: In the example of the decay of a metastable scalar field state (the conformal vacuum of scalar particles over a false classical vacuum) in the background de Sitter metric, we propose a method to account for the initial quantum field state in the semiclassical calculation of the path integral in a curved space–time. Using this method, we justify the Coleman–De Luccia approach to calculating the decay probability. We interpret the Hawking–Moss instanton as a limit of constrained instantons. We find that the inverse process of the true vacuum going into a false one can occur in the de Sitter space and find the expression for the corresponding probability.

Received: 12.05.1999

DOI: 10.4213/tmf790


 English version:
Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, 1999, 120:3, 1194–1212

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